A Question of Good Judgment; Interpretation Theory and Qualitative Enquiry.

Bartlett, Leo

The rush to do qualitative enquiry in education in the past decade has spawned a variety of methodologies and non-methodologies. The desire for absolute rules and lawlike procedures lingers and the current search is for certain rather than good judgments about educational phenomena. A methodology described as "quasi-historical" is selected as one that is most likely to result in "good judgments" in educational enquiry. Lawrence Stenhouse's approach to the quasi-historical method scrutinizes critical educational phenomena (evidence derived principally from interview) using a process of intersubjective judgment of the evidence. Interpretations are refined and the "truth" found in case records is made explicit. The methodology makes no pretension to comprehensiveness but aims to connect the understanding of action to distinctively social levels of explanation. The three phases of the interpretive process are: (1) understanding as guessing; (2) explanation as reconstruction of "knowledgeability" in institutions; and (3) comprehension (depth interpretation) as reconstruction of structural elements. A reference list of 45 sources is included. (PPB)